ChipChat - Sept 1999

We are well into the fall semester and most students have now had their first round of exams. How about those football Boilermakers!!! Highly ranked and a 4-0 start. Is it possible that by the time you receive this newsletter we will have gone to Michigan and chalked up win number 5? Let's hope that happens. The schedule in October is incredibly tough - Michigan (A), Ohio State (A), Michigan State (H), and Penn State (H). It is exciting to see Ross Ade Stadium almost full each week with Boilermaker fans. If you like football, I hope you'll make it to one or more of the remaining home games. If you come to homecoming (Michigan State) on October 16, I hope you will join us for the annual pharmacy tailgater sponsored by the Pharmacy Alumni Association. The game starts at 2:30PM, so we will open the tailgater at about 11:30AM. Come enjoy a BBQ sandwich, cole slaw, pickle, chips, cookie, and pop or coffee. We will have a tent in the parking lot just south of the Heine Pharmacy Building. Donations encouraged, but not required. Hope to see you there.

Every 6 years the school receives an accreditation review from the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education (ACPE). The review team was at Purdue the first week of September to review our Pharm.D. program. You may recall that ACPE no longer accredits B.S. Pharmacy programs as schools nationally are completing the transition to the Pharm.D. as the only entry-level practice degree. The accreditation guidelines outline 30 standards that programs must meet. For a year prior to an accreditation visit, a school conducts an extensive self-study to determine if standards are being met and what steps are needed to bring any deficiencies up to standard. At Purdue we organized six study committees each consisting of faculty, alumni, administration, and students. The committees were 1) mission, planning, assessment, organization and administration, 2) curricular standards, 3) student services, 4) faculty resources, 5) library and learning resources, and 6) physical facilities. I am so appreciative of Dr. Robert Chalmers for coordinating the entire self-study process and in compiling the reports of the various study committees. The result was most impressive. The six-member accreditation team reviewed the self-study before coming to Purdue, and then spent 2 days meeting with faculty, students, and preceptors about our program. While I will not have the final report until the end of the year, all went well. The team was particularly complimentary of our planning efforts and the collegiality of the faculty and their involvement with all aspects of the school. The weak area, which we had already identified in the self-study, was an early experience program for our students and an ongoing practice transition throughout their time at Purdue. We will be working hard to improve in this area. In all it was a very positive experience and allowed us to reflect on how much progress we have made over the past six years.

The fall issue of the Purdue Pharmacist mailed this week and I encourage you to take a close look. I am particularly happy about Marc Loudon earning the campus-wide Murphy Award for teaching. There is also a summary of the 3rd Annual BoileRx Golf Classic where we raised about $16,000 (mostly for scholarships). There are articles on Varro Tyler receiving an honorary doctorate from Purdue, distinguished alumni, retiring faculty, new faculty, and the feature article on Dianne Kennedy who directs the FDA's MedWatch program.

In August, Holly Mason, Marc Loudon, Steve Abel, Bruce Hufford and I spent two days at Eli Lilly and Company meeting with department heads who regularly hire pharmacists in their areas. We also had the opportunity to meet with several of our alumni. Currently, about 200 of our graduates, mostly B.S. and Pharm.D., work with Lilly. We were delighted to hear about the many job opportunities there will be in the future for our graduates. There is high interest in the Pharm.D., the B.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences, as well as our Ph.D. programs. The week after we returned Lilly made the announcement about their plans to greatly expand over the next 5-10 years. There seem to be many opportunities for collaboration. We hope to expand internship, residency, and fellowship positions in many areas. We were hosted by Pedro Granadillo, Mark Foglesong, and Carrie Beaulieu.

More than 40 minority students participated in the Excel Math program sponsored by the school the week before classes started. This is a concentrated program designed to hone skills in mathematics.

This summer I was one of 12 mid-western pharmacy school deans to spend time with Meijer in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Pat Gavin, VP of Pharmacy Operations, was our host. We toured a busy Meijer pharmacy and I was impressed at the logical approach they utilize in helping pharmacists provide patient care services. They have put a lot of emphasis on work place issues in discussions with their employees. They are still evolving, but seem to be on the right track in providing a good work environment for our graduates who end up as Meijer pharmacists.

On a very sad note, I attended TAPS ceremony for John Tran, who was killed in an automobile accident early in the summer. John would have been a second-professional year student. He is missed by all who knew him and cared for him.

Professor Emeritus Patrick Belcastro put together a fine poster on the history of the Purdue School of Pharmacy and presented it at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) meeting this summer in Boston. This was the 100th anniversary of AACP.

Dr. Gary Isom, long time faculty member in the Department of Medicinal chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (MCMP), was promoted to Purdue Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School. Congratulations Gary!

There has been strong interest in the B.S. Pharmaceutical Sciences program. This 4-year, non-practice degree program prepares graduates for starting positions in the pharmaceutical or related industries, medical school, or graduate school. Jo Davisson, Ken Morris, and Pat George have been very instrumental in getting this program off to a good start.